Fresh off Teatru Malta’s most recent trip to Prague for the European Theatre Convention’s first bi-annual conference of the year, theatre colleagues from all over Europe reunited in the spirit of collaboration and further learning. Discussions among conference participants ranged from making art in conflict zones to the concept of ‘Black Joy’. 

Teatru Malta are excited to be collaborating with ETC on a number of interesting projects within the next few years.

One such project is Pipelines, a project the national theatre company announced earlier this year, headed by Maltese representative and script writer Simone Spiteri.

This piece, penned by Spiteri, will be coming to fruition in the coming months, and showcases how European collaboration and political engagement can foster visibility for burning issues, highlights local themes on global issues and shows that common problems can be solved when working together.

With the enterprise Young Europe 4, the ETC are setting their sights on exposing the non-dominant voices in our societies and voicing stories that haven’t yet been told.

These specific stories will be told through highlighting “forgotten” plays and by writing new ones to be staged in classrooms, where emerging playwrights from minority groups in the European theatre canon, from some eight different countries, will write eight new plays for young audiences between the ages of 12 and 25. Each play will be staged by one of the member theatres in classrooms. 

Teatru Malta’s work on this classroom project kicked-off this spring, whereby meetings were organised between mentor Ruth Borg and mentees and writers Alex Weenink and Kurt Gabriel Meli to begin to develop the work in question with the intention of all partners from all participating theatre companies coming together again during this joint festival in 2024.

Lastly, the latest in this series of international co-productions between Teatru Malta and select ETC member and non-member theatres directed by Haris Pašović will focus on creating a lively mixed-cast performance dealing with the topic of European theatre ecosystem.

Set in a fictional International Theatre Awards festival where the artistic director and an international jury try to pick the prize winners this piece will represent a platform where the creators can reflect on their own positions towards the theatre trends, politics, different issues and scandals.

This performance will present around seven-ten live English-speaking actors on stage and will feature short video trailers of fictional performances that were selected to the festival. The three partners that started this co-production will not be the only partners of the production. 

For more information and all the latest Teatru Malta and ETC news please visit www.teatrumalta.org